The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch-sensitive surfaces include touch pads and touch screen displays. Such surfaces are widely used to manipulate user interface objects on a display.
Exemplary manipulations include entering text using a text entry interface (e.g., an interface that includes a soft keyboard) and viewing text and other content in a concurrently displayed viewing area. While the virtual keyboard is displayed, there is less screen space for the viewing area. Thus, the user may want to resize the viewing area and the text entry interface to reveal more of the content.
But existing methods for resizing the viewing area and text entry interface are cumbersome and inefficient. For example, existing methods typically employ an all-or-nothing approach; the soft keyboard is either completely displayed or completely hidden. Completely hiding the soft keyboard when the user merely wants a temporarily expanded view of the viewing area is inefficient and tedious, as the user has to make an additional input to make the soft keyboard reappear. In addition, existing methods take longer than necessary, thereby wasting energy. This latter consideration is particularly important in battery-operated devices.